Let's Make A Deal
by zTiamaTz
Summary: How exactly did Xander end up cutting a deal with the Order of Taraka to stop The Mayor and Faith?
1. The Meet

**Title: Let's Make a Deal**

**Author: zTiamaTz**

**Email:**

**Beta By: Starway Man**

**Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Angel the Series, along with the characters from their respective shows, are owned by Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy.**

**Description: How exactly did Xander end up cutting a deal with the Order of Taraka to stop The Mayor and Faith?**

**Continuity: Prequel/Sequel to my story 'Last Chance'.**

**A/N: This story will be entirely from Xander's POV.**

**A/N 2: This initially takes place two days before the story 'Last Chance'. It can be found on Chapter 3 in my series 'The Rantings of a Madman'.**

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**THE MEET**

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I kicked a rock down the sidewalk as I headed toward The Bronze, stake in hand. The others were off taking care of some demon nest, while I was supposed to stay safe at home. Well, screw that.

While the rest of the gang - well, almost - were doing their thing, I was doing mine. Since the vamps seemed to love to pick people off from the only worthwhile teen club in town, I figured that was a perfect place to let off some steam, and save some lives. Not that I had any intention of telling anyone what I was up to.

See, when Faith had gone over to the Mayor's side, she'd let it slip what I'd been up to the night we'd had sex. She didn't know about the zombies, but that was more than enough for Buffy to freak out when Faith had taunted her with it. Giles had backed up his Slayer like a good little Watcher, giving me that damned British look of disapproval.

Willow and Oz were still keeping their distance from me because of the whole 'fluke' thing. Cordelia and I were at each other's throats as she clawed her way back up the social ladder – that is, when she could even bothered acknowledging I existed any longer – and I couldn't stand that prick Wesley, who was nowadays trying to put the moves on my ex.

Plus, I was still pissed at Angel for punching me out cold in the middle of the street when they tricked Faith. Buffy too, a little, what with her lame-ass defense that he'd had to do it in order to keep up appearances.

Funny thing how it didn't occur to her, or anyone else for that matter, what would have happened if I hadn't woken up soon after, right? Hello, free meal for anything that happened to come along! But of course, I knew no one wanted to hear it. So basically, I was on the outs with everybody.

Reaching The Bronze, I cut down the alley on the side. Finding some pallets stacked conveniently against the wall, I settled in and waited. I knew this wouldn't take long.

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Fifteen minutes later, out walked two people: a guy and a girl. While I didn't have any slay-dar, it was pretty easy to pick out that he was the bloodsucker. Please, even _I_ knew that guys didn't wear bell bottom jeans anymore!

As I approached, I saw the girl was Lisa Barnes, a girl from my History class. She was shy, and a bit chubby, but nice. The vamp had taken advantage of that, like they'd done to Willow the night we'd lost Jesse. The girl was just happy to have a guy show her some attention.

I knew for a fact that that was why the Cordettes had stayed pretty much intact since their inception in junior high; they were never that hard-up for a date to ever get in this kind of situation.

It actually made me feel kinda good about myself, thinking back on it, that I had never been in that situation before I'd met Buffy. I guess I'd never looked pathetic enough to approach, which was actually pretty ironic. If a hot female vamp had pouted and wiggled their ass at me, I would have followed it anywhere back then. To my doom, sure, but I'd have thought to myself, what a way to go...

I quickly tussled my hair up, and started walking toward the pair with a pronounced limp. "Hey, can you guys help me out here?" I called out, just as the vamp was leaning in for the kill.

Lisa looked over to me first, and her eyes went wide. "Xander, is that you?" Unlike a lot of the students in Sunnydale High, I'd actually treated her with respect, so she had a soft spot for me.

"Yeah, Lis, I was coming up to the Bronze, when some kinda thing attacked me outta nowhere," I ignored the sneer the vamp gave me for interrupting his meal. "It bit me on the leg and all..."

I kept getting closer, and Lisa tried to push off the wall to come to my aid. Only problem was the vamp went into game-face and grabbed her arm, yanking her toward him. "Where do you think you're going?"

Lisa screamed when she caught sight of his face, and that's when I made my move. I surged forward, stake in hand, and with my left hand, shoved him to the side, so that the vamp's back was toward me.

Before he even knew what happened, my stake was in his heart, and he'd exploded into dust. Just for a moment, the outline of a skeleton was visible. Lisa just stood there, open-mouthed, staring back and forth between the pile of dust and my stake.

"W-what..."

I took her by the arm, and led her to the side door she'd come out of. "Go home, get some sleep, and this will all be a bad dream by tomorrow morning, trust me."

Once Lisa was inside, I leaned back against the wall with a loud sigh. One down, who knew how many more to go tonight...

"Good evening, Mister Harris," a male voice called out from the depths of the alley.

I looked up in time to see a pair of red eyes coming at me from out of the darkness. I turned to reach for the door, only to plant my face into something big, and end up falling on my ass.

While trying to climb to my feet, I saw a pair of legs in front of me, looking up and up and up - I finally saw what I'd run into. The man had to be over seven feet tall, and I'd slammed right into his chest. It looked like he hadn't even moved an inch from the impact.

"Going somewhere?" the big man growled.

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I scrambled away from him, grabbing my stake along the way. I put my back up against the wall, and held the thing up in front of me. This guy was probably going to kill me, but I was going to make him work for it.

"Do you really think you have a chance here?" the voice from before asked, coming from my left.

There was Red Eyes, I'd almost forgotten about him after running into the big man. "The first one to come at me gets dusted, so who's it going to be?"

"I'll give you this much, Mister Harris, you certainly act like a man who faced Angelus and lived to tell the tale," Red Eyes said, as he came into view under one of the few working lights in the alley. "But we aren't vampires." He held his up the back of his hand to show a _very_ familiar ring.

"Aw...shit." The Order of Taraka. They must have gotten pissed off that I killed one of their guys last year. Hopefully, they didn't know Cordy had had anything to do with it. "Fine. You guys are gonna kill me, go ahead. But I'm not apologizing for killing that asshole, Norman the Bug Man."

"On the contrary," Red Eyes replied. "We were pleased to hear of his death, and your assessment of his character is quite accurate."

"Okay…" That wasn't at all what I'd expected to hear. "But I thought you guys were all about brotherhood and stuff?"

The big man chuckled, the sound bounced eerily off the dark alley walls. "Were not Cain and Abel also brothers?" he asked rhetorically.

Looking back and forth between the two of them, I realized I was in way over my head here...

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"So – ah, if you guys aren't mad that I killed your buddy the human bug guy, what can I help you with, then?"

"We want his ring, Mister Harris, and that of our other fallen comrades. And given your local reputation, we considered seeing you about this situation first as the best course of action."

Reputation? Me? Oh, crap. "I only have one of the rings, Angelus has the others." Dirty trick? Yeah, but if they went after him later, I figure Buffy would at least have some warning the Order was in town again.

"Please, Mister Harris. We all know that Miss Summers killed Octarus and Patrice."

Huh, and here I thought Police Lady had gotten away back then. Still, Buffy had killed her and not told us? Not told me? Then again, why should she have? As many people have taken pains to point out to me lately, I'm not a Slayer...

"And I'm the easiest target, right?" I spat, staring down Red Eyes. Just because they were going to kill me for what I'd done back then – and thank God Cordelia's name hadn't been mentioned, I was willing to bet now that they didn't know about her – that didn't mean I was going to act like a coward. "Makes sense, I suppose. Get the useless normal human out of the way before going after the big guns..."

"Really, Mister Harris, did you honestly think we would be fooled by such a silly trick? A man who can get his hands on military-grade weaponry? Or make demons nearly piss themselves when we asked about you at that filthy demon bar near the docks, can hardly be described as the 'useless normal human', can he?"

This was new, they thought I was some kind of major player in Sunnydale? I could read between the lines, though. They wanted the rings, and they were going to kill me to do it. There was one thing I could try, though...

"Uh, guys, I happen to have a question before we get down to business. By any chance, have either of you ever heard of a ritual called the Ascension?"

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**A/N 3: This was originally going to be another one-shot story, but I just liked the concept too much to stop here.**

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**END**


	2. The Offer

**Title: Let's Make a Deal**

**Author: zTiamaTz**

**Email: WMullen78 at Yahoo dot com**

**Beta By: Starway Man  
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**THE OFFER**

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When the big guy actually growled at hearing the A-word, I was guessing they had heard of Ascensions. Now, I had a chance to actually get out of this with my hide intact.

Good ol' Red Eyes came at me from the side, gripping me by the front of my shirt, and slamming me against the alley wall. "What do you know about an _Ascension_?"

With the two of us practically nose-to-nose, I grinned in his face. "Well, funny thing. If I'm going to die, I've got no reason to tell you, do I?"

"Old Ones are bad for business," Big Guy stated simply.

"That they are, my friend," Red Eyes replied over his shoulder, before turning back to my still-grinning face. "Mister Harris, I can assure you _right now_, that if you are attempting to play games with us, you have just traded a relatively painless bullet in the head for a very _painful_end."

I had my way out, and as a bonus, I had also found a way to get rid of this year's Big Bad. This had turned out a lot better then I had expected.

"I'm not dicking around with you guys, and to prove it, I'll make a blood pact with you - right now."

Red Eyes suddenly let go of my shirt and stepped back. From the look on his face, I really doubted either one of them had expected something like this to go down, especially over a simple ring retrieval.

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I'd read about the Order guys when Giles had first told us about them. I had never expected to kill one back then, I did it just to see if there was any way I could help Buffy out. So sue me, in those days I thought that if I just tried hard enough and waited long enough for her to get over the walking corpse, she'd eventually become Mrs. Buffy Harris.

I know, I know: fat chance of that ever happening in hindsight, which is always 20-20. But be that as it may, one of the things I had found out during my stint as Research Boy just happened to be the Order's use of blood pacts.

There was apparently more to it than just the magicks, but basically, two people cut their hands open and shake, while making a mystical agreement. If the agreement was ever broken by either party, then that person would die in a horrible way that was never really made clear in the book I'd read.

The Tarakans used them extensively to keep their members toeing the line, along with some useful associates of the Order. Considering the info I had, I figured it made me pretty damn useful to them...

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"What exactly is the pact you wish to make, young one?" the large Tarakan asked, as he approached me.

"It's pretty simple: I give you the rings and all the info I have on the upcoming Ascension, and in return you - plus anyone and everyone even remotely associated with the Order - leave me and the rest of my friends alone, not to mention alive and in good health."

The two looked at each other, and the huge man nodded. After that, Red Eyes turned back to me with a smirk on his face, and I got the sudden nasty feeling I wasn't getting everything I'd hoped for here.

"Acceptable, but this agreement only pertains to the current situation. If future individuals wish to take out a contract on yours, or the others' heads, we will accept them."

I thought about that for a second. I could either start a war with these two right now, or agree to those terms. While there was a chance one of our future enemies could put out a hit on one of us, this was a guaranteed out, right now.

"Agreed," I told them, as I reached into my pocket. Seeing them tense up, I pulled my hand back. "Just grabbing my knife is all..."

"_Slowly_." He warned.

"Sure thing, Big Guy." I pulled out my Spyderco military knife. I'd picked it up from the same store that Buffy and Faith had broken into awhile back. "By the way, have you guys got names? At the moment, all I've got is Big Guy and Red Eyes."

"You may call us Mister Port," Red Eyes told me, before nodding to the big guy. "And Mister Storm."

I looked back and forth between the two as I unfolded my knife. "I get the meaning behind them, but, uh, I have to admit - it doesn't exactly elicit the terror you'd expect from the Order of Taraka."

Storm cracked a grin for the first time, showing off some very nasty teeth. "We are part of the reclamations division, Mister Harris. If the Order of Taraka were to become public knowledge, there would be..._problems_."

"Gotcha, right. Now, how exactly do we do this?" I asked nervously, as I watched Mister Port draw what looked to be a small machete from his boot. "I mean, the book I read was kinda vague on the fine details."

"Tell me, then, Mister Harris, are you a squeamish man?" the smaller Tarakan asked, with that same smirk from before.

I couldn't help but wonder if it was too late for second thoughts.

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I sucked in a breath as Mister Port wrapped a handkerchief around my still-bleeding left hand. Holy fuck - that had hurt like hell, but I wasn't going to look like a pansy in front of these guys.

The pact itself had been pretty straight-forward, the cutting, the handshake, exactly like I had expected. But instead of just saying what our agreement was, each of us had to recite a very long, very boring speech with words I couldn't even pronounce properly.

I'd had to try three times before I got the whole thing right, but it had finally worked. There had been a flash of blue light, and then something like an electric shock that had run up my arm and through my body.

It hadn't been the most pleasant thing that I'd ever endured, but this was Sunnydale, so I was sure there were worse things in my future. Assuming that I actually lived much longer. "Okay guys, now that that's done, what do you want to hear about first?"

"The rings, where are they?"

"I've got one back at my house, Buffy and Angel either have one or both of them. I'm not sure which of them have what, but it'll be pretty easy to find out."

"And how do you intend to do that, Mister Harris?" Port questioned.

"Simple," I told them with a grin. "Angel and I are going to have a nice little chat about the matter."

"The vampire you refer to is over two hundred and fifty years old. No one is quite sure how long he spent in Hell, but we estimate it was at least a century: possibly more. Soul or not, he is still one of the most vicious creatures to ever walk the earth."

"Yeah, but unlike Buffy, if he's got to bleed a bit for me to get the point across, then I'm okay with that."

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**A/N: If you guys have a chance, please check out my much under-loved story: 'What's A California'. It's a really strange Xander fic I started a few weeks ago.**

**Also, my beta, Starway Man, has recently added the third chapter of his new fic: 'The Effects Of Wishful Thinking'. What I've read so far is good stuff, and I expect it to get even better. Let us know what you think, thanks.**

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**END**


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